Natural Connections

Something small and bright caught my eye. Stopping mid-stride and mid-conversation, I bent down to look at a small jumble of legs and exoskeletons in the tread of the Ice Age Trail. The yellow mantle behind the head of a black carrion beetle is what I'd noticed first. They are quite striking, even when rooting around in the decaying flesh of a recently dead animal, looking for a place to lay their eggs. The adults eat dead stuff, too, hence the bear hug this one was giving a shiny brown, but unmoving, carcass of a Junebug. 

Excitement and nerves were at an all time high as my car crept down the gravel road, the sun having just slipped below the horizon. I was on the hunt, following clues to lead me to my prize. My treasure was the somewhat elusive American woodcock, and I was hoping to catch a glimpse of their infamous skydance.

Although I often hear their rattling bugle calls echoing across the lake and through my open windows, having cranes nest where I could see them was a new treat. For a few weeks, every warm afternoon found me biking along that stretch of road with my camera at the ready. Each time, the evening sunlight spotlighted the face of a crane on the nest.

Last Sunday I was asked to give the message for the Chequamegon Unitarian Universalist Flower Ceremony. Everyone brought a flower, they were admired in a bouquet, and each person left with a different flower. This symbolized the unique value of each person and the way we came together to create a beautiful bouquet. To illustrate this idea, I chose to talk about ghost pipe (previously named Indian pipe), a plant whom I've been puzzling over for a while. In preparing the talk, I realized that I'd learned a lot from ghost pipe.

Scientist E.O. Wilson's book Biophilia hypothesized that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature and other forms of life. He wrote, “To an extent still undervalued in philosophy and religion, our existence depends on this propensity, our spirit is woven from it, hope rises on its currents." I watched as the Wilson's Warbler bounced like popcorn through the narrow, willow-ish leaves of an unknown desert shrub. While this bird was named for a different Wilson, he certainly satisfied E.O. Wilson's Biophilia.

I apologize for the weird audio quality this week! I'm traveling -- as you'll hear -- and my audio editing program did an update that takes out breath noises, etc, automatically. But that also changes how my voice sounds and seems to reduce enunciation. If it's too annoying to listen to, you can read the article at: https://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/ 

At the trailhead, the woods were set alight by the sunshine reflecting off the melting snow. While my boots crunched down the trail, my eyes wandered to the trees where life was starting to awaken. Lichens, mosses, and mushrooms decorated the bark in a burst of bright greens, yellows and oranges–a welcome sight against the backdrop of the forest.

“What sweet ode shall we write to spring? Soft and tremulous one minute, tempestuous the next, she proffers her gifts with one fair hand and with the other snatches them away.”  –Lois Nestel, Wayside Wanderings II

A faint string of birdsong filtered through closed windows on a recent morning. It was well after dawn, but thick gray clouds made it feel like the Sun had yet to rise. “Song sparrow!” I exclaimed. “They must have arrived overnight!” 

The grouse drummed again; thumping slowly at first, and then crescendoing into a rapid-fire blur. As his last vibrations dissipated into the still air, another grouse answered from a neighboring territory. The low-frequency sounds are audible from up to a quarter mile away. I'm always amazed by how much I feel their sound instead of hearing it.

For three days in the summer of 2018 we worked on this mark-recapture survey along a pipeline access road in the Brooks Range of northern Alaska, gathering data that would help scientists at the nearby Gates of the Arctic National Park estimate snowshoe hare population numbers for this year. Our opinion? The population was high. Almost every trap was full, which meant a delayed lunch, and that sense of relief to find an empty trap.

Listening to a pair of wood ducks explode from a tiny patch of open water in a woodland pond and woo-eek through the woods is a distinctly springtime experience. Wood ducks are uniquely adapted for life in the forest, with strong claws on their webbed toes that allow them to perch on tree branches. Scaring up a pair of wood ducks together is common, because these ducks find a mate on their wintering grounds and arrive home together. 

The first ice cave was a wonder to behold. Crouching low, we shuffled into the crack that was the cave entrance. The light from our headlamps danced across the cave walls and highlighted the mass of clear ice that extended from the ceiling to the surface of the lake. As other tour guests took pictures with the glowing ice, I was marveling at the cave formation. Sitting under a low-hanging section of the cave, I began to think about how these caves along Chequamegon Bay are formed.

For recording time-activity-budgets for loons, Jay has an app on his phone that is set to beep at 2-minute intervals for an hour. At every beep, the binocular-wielding observers help the recorder mark down the behavior. Was the loon resting, locomoting, preening, foraging, or being aggressive? And was the loon within 25 body lengths of another loon? How many loons? One of the main goals of this research is to compare how loons on the salt-free waters of Lake Jocassee spend their time, versus loons who spend their winter on the ocean.

The first day of Loon Camp begins with a count of all the loons on Lake Jocassee, which is why I was now puttering through the upper lake on a pontoon boat with Jay, Brooks, and seven other “loonatics.” With eyes scanning and binoculars at the ready, we spotted solo loons fishing in the deep water, rafts of loons preening near shore, and gaggles of smaller waterfowl like horned grebes, too. Jay kept the tally on his data sheet, and we were free to be amazed by the loons. 

Note from Emily Stone: I'm so excited that Heaven has joined our Museum team! In between teaching MuseumMobile programs in schools, organizing spring field trips, and leading Junior Naturalist Programs, Heaven will be guest writing for Natural Connections about once a month. I'm looking forward to following her journey of discovery in the Northwoods!   Heaven in the Northwoods: "The wonders of nature have fascinated me from a young age. Now I strive to understand the intricate natural workings of each place I live or visit. Cable, Wisconsin, is my newest place of interest. As the new Educator/Naturalist at the Cable Natural History Museum, I will get to use my fascination with the environment to connect both myself and the public with Northwoods nature."

I hardly needed to zoom in to see the bird's black head, white face with black stripe, black-and-white barring on their flanks, and solid black back. Five years ago I'd seen an almost identical woodpecker in this same bog, but that one had a stripe of white down the middle of their back identifying them as a three-toed woodpecker. This was their cousin, a black-backed woodpecker.

The wind can be a symbol of unity, freedom, eternity and balance. It is as true ecologically as it is metaphorically.  As the winter winds swirl around you, take moment to appreciate the wind's role in encouraging balance and unity in our sometimes stormy world.

It wasn't long before someone keyed in on an adorably squiqqly line snaking up the length of a tree. A frost crack! Long ago I learned that these cracks burst open with a noise like a rifle shot as a sunny day plunges into a frigid night. I couldn't remember, though: was it the contraction of cooling wood, or the expansion of ice that caused the trunk to split? Both make sense. I pondered this as we hiked along, and also tried to spot more cracks throughout the forest. 

As the snow melts and I enter the melancholy often brought on by mud season, I find myself seeking comfort in the words of Lois Nestel, the founding naturalist, director, and curator of the Cable Natural History Museum. She wrote: “Now there seems a desolation and bitterness in the wind as though it mourns the sadness and injustice in the world. But the wind is not governed by political upheavals, poverty or crime. It is as it has always been. Only the listener, the endurer, has changed."

You know it's chilly when even Lake Superior can see their own breath. During a recent period of bitter cold, there was sea smoke drifting across the shining gray wavelets near Grand Marais, MN. Lake water had also formed ice on the rocks near shore, and we circumnavigated Artist's Point to admire Nature's sculptures. All the while, a small flock of mallard ducks bobbed on the waves in East Bay, behind the protective curve of Artist's Point in Lake Superior. Then, driving home, something large swooped across the highway in front of us and several feet above the car. The blunt face and tapered silhouette were unmistakable characteristics of a Great Gray Owl—my first one in the wild! This day may have been bitter cold, but that made the beauty in it all the more sweet.

Murmurs of interest rippled through the classroom as I spread a rectangle of green felt on the floor at the front of the room. The murmurs became questions as I placed two lines of life-sized animal tracks, printed and cut out of white paper, onto the felt. When I finally invited the second graders to come up and gather around the felt, I was amazed by the almost instantaneous formation of a perimeter of kneeling children, totally focused on the scene.

On Christmas Day, I found myself driving from Lutsen, Minn., to Duluth with a very unusual package next to my skis and duffle bag. To reassure ourselves that the owl was still alive, Christine opened one of the flaps on the box. Staring up at us were two giant yellow eyes nestled into satellite dishes of gray-patterned feathers that funnel sound into the owl's hidden ears. 

Gathered around a bonfire on the Winter Solstice, the hostess asked us each to share one moment from the past year that made us go, “Wow!” Despite the fact that my year had included rafting the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, my favorite “wow” moment happened on a river much closer to home. One lovely afternoon last May, I set out with a friend to paddle an upper section of the Namekagon River. Approaching a bridge, a burst of twittering, movement, and flashes of yellow in the alder shrubs drew my attention. Squinting, I thought I spotted a black cap on one of the tiny heads, and quickly pulled into an eddy. Sure enough, our binoculars revealed a flock of half-a-dozen or more little birds, “yellow as a lemon, with a smooth, black cap…” as Mary Oliver described them. Laughing in delight, we felt like we'd just conjured these Wilson's Warblers with her poem.

Chickadees cache as many as one hundred thousand food items per year. Not only do chickadees remember their seed cache sites, but they also remember details like which food items were the most favored and which seeds have already been eaten by them or by a thief. To support such an incredible memory, chickadees grow 30 percent more neurons in the fall when caching behavior peaks. Last April, researchers at Columbia University added to our understanding of chickadee memory. They discovered that chickadees create “neural barcodes” and essentially create their own system for inventory and checkout—just like at a grocery store!

While digesting one of the many rounds of holiday feasts and leftovers, with plates of cookies in between, a headline caught my eye: “Big brains or big guts: Choose one.” As much as the post-holiday-dinner-brain-fog is real, I don't love the implications of those options. Luckily, the article wasn't about humans. It was examining birds in cold, highly variable habitats, and their struggle to survive. Essentially, birds have two options: spend energy maintaining a big brain that allows them to find high-quality food, or spend energy maintaining a large stomach that can make low-quality food sufficient in high quantities. According to the research, if you are a bird who needs to survive cold winters, you must choose one. There's no middle ground. 

In a landscape of winter white, bits of color really pop. Recently I was on the North Shore of Minnesota when they received several inches of fluffy, wonderful snow. The forest seemed decked out for Christmas with clusters of bright red mountain-ash berries adding color in the woods along the ski trails, around town, and on the rocky shore of Lake Superior. Ruffed grouse appreciate them even more, I'm sure, as they perch in the dark purple twigs and nibble both berries and buds. And now the trees have given me a bit of a mystery to nibble on too...

The lack of leaves in this “see-through season” reveals aspects of the landscape otherwise obscured. For example, “Check out that nest!” I exclaimed to my friend, and we admired the small cup suspended between a Y in the sugar maple twigs. The placement of the nest, plus the few pale strips of paper from a bald-faced hornet nest woven among grass, bark, and pine needles, told me that it was likely built by a red-eyed vireo. 

On a recent hike in Virginia, a song burst out of a bush beside us. The white-throated sparrow riffed on their usual song, experimenting with a gravely “sweet can-a-NA-da can-a!” “Jazzy!” We laughed to each other. I don't usually expect birds to sing in their winter habitat. Birds' songs are typically used to attract mates and defend territories, and therefore are most useful in spring and summer. So, we figured we were hearing a young male practicing for the coming year. As it turns out, that was only part of the story.

Head down, I hurried toward the post office. Then, a spot of color made me stop and smile. A single yellow dandelion and its star of vibrant, toothy leaves nestled into the grass. I've always loved dandelions. And, the dandelion may be more useful than I ever imagined! The Kazakh dandelion, a relative of the one in your yard, is an excellent source of natural rubber.

Once upon a time, and by that, I mean 1.9 billion years ago, the atmosphere was filled with carbon dioxide and methane, and the first inklings of life had only just begun. Volcanic activity in the early oceans, and erosion off the few continents, enriched the water with iron and silica. Cyanobacteria bloomed in those mineral-rich seas, and they also produced at least one type of toxin: oxygen.

Light from the dining hall at Upham Woods Outdoor Learning Center spilled out, down the hill, under the pines, and onto the bank of the Wisconsin River, where a handful of environmental educators were waiting for a night hike to begin.  I almost hadn't joined the group. This was the final night of the Wisconsin Association of Environmental Education annual conference, and I had a long drive home the next day. Being sleepy for that wouldn't be ideal. But it had been years since I'd been on a night hike, and I didn't want to miss out. 

An odd series of hollow little clucks and rattles emanated from a patch of lichen-crusted rocks. Was there a friendly alien hiding nearby? Or maybe a Star Wars character that only Han Solo can understand? With short, jerking movements, the camouflaged chatterboxes revealed their identity: ptarmigans.

The wool of my favorite old rusty orange sweater felt warm and scratchy as I stuffed it into my backpack next to a jacket and camera. The low gray clouds hung onto their rain, but wind gusts flung water drops off the trees as I walked to my car. As soon as I turned onto the gravel road, though, I knew I'd made the right decision. The much-needed rain had washed dust off the autumn leaves and saturated their colors. This was a perfect day for a scenic drive through a rainbow forest.

Ever since I discovered how to read the glaciated landscape of Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, I've been fascinated by these massive forces of nature. Admiring them from afar, seeing them up close, paddling among icebergs, touching their ice…glaciers are even more amazing than I'd expected. This week I've been busy leading field trips, but I've been dreaming of a time when I was a participant on two field trips that involved paddling near glaciers in Alaska.

By Elliot Witscher with Emily Stone In the bright sunlight and heat of the afternoon, the cool, fresh, flowing water from a pipe in Prentice Park in Ashland, WI, was a welcome treat. I wasn't expecting to find a unique geological feature in an unassuming city park. But walking down the hill from the parking lot, we found a plain metal pipe, surrounded by gravel, with water gushing from it. Standing in a circle with the 20 other people also taking the Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteer Training, I learned from Professor Tom Fitz that this was a flowing artesian well.

As our water taxi motored into the harbor, a gray-headed water bird floated around the corner of a barnacle-crusted rock. A Pacific Loon! Having spotted one new species of loon, my interest in seeing the others grew. The afternoon that I arrived at the Toolik Field Station to prepare for doing caribou research, I took a short walk around the base to get a feel for the area. The tremolo of a loon flying overhead sent a thrill down my spine, and I watched the large bird land on the far side of Toolik Lake. Were they a Common Loon? They sounded similar. But the logo for Toolik features a Yellow-billed Loon, and I was sure the scientists would have chosen them deliberately. Now that I'd seen the most similar loon to the ones I'd left back home, my last goal was to see the most different loon.

A small group of first graders nearly vibrated with excitement as they gathered in a circle on the carpet at the front of their room. They remembered me from last school year, when I'd brought tubs full of nature stuff to their kindergarten classroom. For those first Museum Mobile visits, we focused on exploring nature using our five senses. Now, as first graders, I explained, we get to practice those skills again…by using our eyes to make observations about spiders! I was heartened by the wave of enthusiasm – not fear – that rippled through the group. 

Floating down the river, exploring the side canyons, relaxing around camp, I was always on the lookout for both the novel and the familiar. A giant insect I'd never seen before but knew immediately to be a Tarantula-hawk Wasp caught my attention just as easily as the glossy black feathers of a Common Raven. After a few days of pointing out something I'd noticed, or explaining the basics of a geological feature, I found more questions coming my way from the other participants. With each teachable moment, I felt more connected to both the canyon and my fellow rafters. I wasn't surprised at the way this unfolded, and probably, neither are you.

Due to a stuffy nose, I'm not recording a new episode for you this week. I did pull forward this episode from 2023 about the elk herd near Clam Lake.  Morning mist hung low in the sky as a dozen elk ran across a clearing. A similarly sized herd of Museum members held our breath and grinned at our good luck. It was luck 3 billion years in the making.

Curtains of vibrant lights were moving just above the horizon. The aurora! My jaw must have dropped as I stumbled backward to lean against the car, and tears welled up as I tilted my head back for a better view. The moon hung full and bright on my east. To my west, spruce trees were silhouetted against the faint, rosy afterglow of the setting sun. And all across my southern sky, northern lights danced in curtains of green and white and pink. The curtains were woven of many wispy streaks, as if I was seeing the individual particles of solar wind blazing through our atmosphere. Northern lights are not just an awesome benefit to living on Earth; they are an absolute necessity to our survival. Our Earth defends us. And the result is unspeakable beauty.

With the rough, rolling, cold, wet ferry ride behind us, we disembarked gratefully at the Windigo dock on the southwest corner of Isle Royale National Park. Isle Royale, a 45 mile long and 9 mile wide bedrock island, is teeming with life that somehow made the treacherous journey. We hoisted our packs and started off down the trail. Before long, we met several pairs of hikers just ending their trips. We asked about their route on the island, their hometown, and which ferry they took. In essence, we asked “How did you get here?” Mostly they used the water route, but one couple arrived by air in a float plane. Historically, making winter crossings by dogsled was also common. Isle Royale is not an easy place to get to, or to get around, and yet life surrounded us on all sides. Soon I started asking “How did you get here?” to everything we saw. 

Cliffs rose out of the lake ahead of us and soon towered a few dozen feet above our heads. Millenia of waves had worked their way into weaker layers of rock and then continued to enlarge them grain by grain. Some hollows were still tiny, but others formed deep alcoves. They spoke of the power of persistence. As we rounded one corner, a sea arch with one leg out in the lake framed our view. In another spot, multiple caves had coalesced into a maze we could paddle through. After hours on the water, we returned to dry land to find food and shade. Taking our dessert to-go, we sat at a picnic table with a view of the lake and remarked about just how restful and healing the day had been. The combination of soaking in sunshine; gazing at and jumping in clean water; feeling awe at the ancient rocks; and admiring the beauty of life, had worked a special kind of magic on our moods. 

Sarah Montzka is about to start their senior year as a wildlife education major at UW Stevens Point. This summer, as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Museum, they taught our Junior Naturalist programs, assisted with live animal care, and showed a real talent for finding and appreciating the oddest parts of nature.  This week Sarah will tell you all about lampreys!

The main event of the moth workshop came after dark. Kyle hung a white sheet with a mercury vapor lamp across an old driveway. Then he painted fermented banana goo onto the trunks of trees along the drive. Until almost midnight, our little group walked from tree to tree to the sheet and back, with stops at patches of blooming milkweed in between. From drab lichen mimics to shimmering green wings; micromoths smaller than a grain of rice to underwing moths the size of my palm; we were captivated by the multitudes of mysterious moths.

Butterwort, primrose, and eyebright are arctic disjuncts, or northern plants who have been separated from their main populations. “We're very interested in these species as the vanguard of climate change for the Arctic. Whatever is happening here is what we expect to see happening farther north, as the climate continues to warm,” said Dr. Briana Gross, an Associate Professor at UMN-Duluth.

I met a new friend this spring, and I've been heading up north to visit them every chance I get. We didn't meet online exactly, but I did use an app to figure out their location. You see, I read about them over the winter, and just had to find out more about their life! They are a little odd – they supplement their diet with insects and make an unusual kind of yogurt – and they may not be hanging out this far south for very much longer.  Being a botany nerd, I call this new friend of mine Pinguicula vulgaris, a plant also known as Common Butterwort.

Keir, who specializes in moss, passed around tuft after tuft of green Dr. Seussian inventions. The scientific names he gave with each sample slipped through my brain in a fog of unspellable syllables. I admired each one eagerly, though, in awe of the kaleidoscope of leaf shapes, textures, patterns, and colors. I was crouched down, admiring the round, glistening leaves of a unique moss sprinkled in a thick jumble across a small bowl between cedar roots, when Keir finally spoke words I recognized. “And here's some spilled penny moss…” I couldn't even see the specimen he held up, but I knew he'd just named my lovely, shiny friend.

I pretty much stopped fishing after my dad stopped untangling my line and tying my hook. The few times I've tried as an adult, I've come up empty-handed. So I have the utmost respect for osprey, who catch at least one fish for every four dives. How do they do it? Osprey, eagles, kingfishers, and green herons have adaptations that make them excellent anglers.

With a quick push from shore, my old green canoe caught the current and we swept downstream on the Namekagon River. The recent rains have filled the river with more water than I've seen in a couple of summers, and warm days have filled the river with life. I'm not sure that we'd been searching for anything in particular when we decided to paddle on the Namekagon, but what we found was a river, that, in the words of Mary Oliver, is “touching every life it meets.”